The story of iodine and common iodine deficiency dates back to the early days of America. In fact, this story goes back to the 1500s when the bison population of Northern America was estimated to be between 30-60 million (1). It was like this for millennia until humans intervened.

Throughout the 1800s with a still booming bison population, the newly formed American Army was desperate to control the Native Americans who called this land home. What was their solution? Kill off all the bison. You can read the full story here.

The History of Bison in America

According to Carolyn Merchant in her bestselling book, American Environmental History: An Introduction, “In 1867, one member of the U.S. Army is said to have given orders to his troops to ‘kill every buffalo you can. Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.’”

To the Native Americans that called this land home for thousands of years, their existence depended heavily upon the bison. Not simply for food, but for shelter, clothing, tools, and more. In fact, they had more than 150 different uses for the bison they killed (2).

They understood that taking another life was no light matter. They used every single part of the animal, to both ensure their survival and to honor the life of the animal they had just taken from the earth.

Not only did they use every single part of the animal nose-to-tail, but they only took what they needed. They killed only what they needed and understood the beautiful balance of life and death. They did not kill for fun and knew that one 1,000-2,000 pound bison could feed an entire tribe for months.

This balance between humans, animals, the land, and our ecosystem has existed for as long as we have evolved to be on this planet. It’s something that you and I living on the same land these Native Americans once roamed have forgotten.

Several years later in 1871, William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and wealthy New Yorkers made a contest out of killing the bison. Some reports have one single man killing as much as 30 bison in one day.

According to Cody, the men that partook in the killing were given all they needed to live off the land to do their jobs well.

Years later, Cody wrote in an article for the Cosmopolitan, “There were none of the discomforts of roughing it upon that expedition. A course dinner of the most delicious viands were served every evening by waiters in evening dress, and prepared by French cooks brought from New York. The linen, china, glass, and porcelain had been provided with equal care, and a big woodfire lent cheerfulness to the dining-tent. This was floord and carpeted with much care, and for years afterward travellers and settlers recognized the sites upon which these camps had been constructed by the quantities of empty bottles which remained behind to mark them.”

This entire mission was what gave William Cody the nickname “Buffalo Bill”. In one 18-month stretch, he claimed to have killed 4,280 buffalo. That would be more than 237 buffalo in a single month, or almost 8 buffalo per day.

It was reported that over 200,000 bison were killed annually and by the end of the 19th century altogether, only 300-400 bison were left in Northern America.

This not only forced the Natives to give into the American government and resort to living on reservations and begin eating corn, grain, and a more Western style diet, but the destruction of the bison population had vast consequences on the ecosystem as well.

Iodine Deficiency in the American Diet

Ruminant animals like cows and bison are meant to live in harmony with the environment, as any living being should. Almost by evolutionary accident did these animals till the land with their hooves, fertilize the soil with their poop, and create luscious pastures all across the Great Plains.

This creates healthy soil which, in turn, creates more nutrients in the food grown in that soil. Not to mention when these animals eat their adapted diet of grass they have more nutrients in their tissues as well.

As the continental railroad became more established and humans expanded West in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they began to settle inland in the states in the upper Midwest and Great Lakes region (where the bison were once densely populated).

It was becoming very obvious that nutrient deficiencies were quite common - iodine being one of them.

In 1987, a peer-reviewed article was written in the American journal of public health which deemed this area as the “goiter belt” because 30-40% of this population developed goiters in 1922 (3, 4).

Most of the iodine we consume goes straight to the thyroid gland to manufacture thyroid hormones. When we become deficient in this key mineral, thyroid problems can occur, goiters being among them.

The thyroid can become inflamed and it become enlarged when there is insufficient iodine in the human diet. This is what’s known as a goiter.

It was during this time in the early 1900s that a lot of changes were taking place in American history. Not only had the bison population been killed off, but industrial agriculture was in full swing.

The once luscious, green pastures the bison roamed on were now replaced with fields of brittle dirt for growing mass grown crops, which in the 1930s, pesticides were commonly sprayed to increase the yield.

Grocery stores had just become invented in 1916, making widely available access to any and all foods that much more accessible.

Modern day plumbing and tap water had just been invented, largely during the Lincoln administration in the late 1800s.

Coca-Cola had just become a global corporation in the 1920s, fueling the charge of increased added sugars per year.

Vegetable oils were invented in the late 1800s and replaced butter in nearly every home in America in the early 1900s.

Our Native American brothers and sisters were free from modern day chronic disease (also free from iodine deficiency, might I mention), yet when we began introducing a heavily domesticated way of life with the addition of these modern day luxuries, it has become quite clear that chronic disease sky-rocketed to epidemic proportions.

In regards to this conversation about iodine, there are many factors that go into proper iodine sufficiency in the human diet.

Not only is iodine an essential nutrient (we need to eat it in our food), but there are many other variables that come into play.

Imagine for a moment that the American Army didn’t kill off the millions of bison and the Native Americans were left to live on this land you and I call home now in the 21st century. What would their diet have looked like in the early 1900s?

There wouldn’t have been any soda, added sugars, vegetable oils, processed foods, imports from China, grocery stores, plumbing, artificial lights, or fields full of grain, corn, and soy.

And there also wouldn’t have been chronic disease among this population, either.

So we must ask the question, why did iodine deficiency become so common, so fast in America during this timeframe?

Many factors attribute to this, but none more than the lack of nutrients in the American diet, and the overconsumption of anti-nutrients and other competing minerals.

Over-consuming the plant species Brassica oleracea directly inhibits iodine uptake in the thyroid gland. This species is a very well-known goitrogen.

This is the most common species eaten among our population today. You may be more familiar with plant names like broccoli, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, turnips, rapeseeds, and collards, however. These are all the same species and they all contain glucosinolates, the goitrogenic compounds.

When you begin introducing an ancestrally inconsistent diet into humans, you will begin to develop disease. Look at human life in America now. It is vastly different than any culture that has ever lived on this planet before in human history.

Iodine deficiency was a side-effect of that drastic change in the early 1900s.

Introducing: Iodized Table Salt

To overcome this problem, in May of 1924 iodized table salt became widely available in most grocery stores across the country (5).

And now in the 21st century, because of how far removed from our natural environment we truly are, most people believe that iodized table salt is the best way to get iodine in their diet. But this is detrimental.

While our culture created one problem (iodine deficiency), we did our best to make up for it by supplementing iodide in salt, something everyone was consuming in the 1920s. But it was this invention that lead to another unintended consequence - the overconsumption of iodide in the human diet.

*Side note: Iodine is a very volatile and unstable element on its own. That’s why iodide is present in foods, but it gets converted into iodine when inside the body.

Yes, we have corrected the iodine deficiency issue we created in the first place, but it seems as though we have created an even bigger issue by giving individuals too much iodine in their diet.

This varies from population to population, but evidence suggest that a majority of thyroid problems occur when you consume too much iodine in your diet, not necessarily too little.

According to a massive review published in the journal PLoS One titled, “Effect of excess iodine intake on thyroid diseases in different populations: A systematic review and meta-analyses including observational studies” researchers concluded this study by saying…

“Although universal salt iodization has improved goiter rates, chronic exposure to excess iodine from water or poorly monitored salt are risk factors for hypothyroidism in free-living populations. Monitoring of both iodine concentration in salt as well as the iodine concentration in local drinking water are essential to preventing thyroid diseases. Hypothyroidism should be also carefully monitored in areas with excess iodine.” (6)

Iodine in supplements

Over-consumption of iodine is a huge problem in our world today. Not only from iodized table salt, but also in supplements. The supplement industry is not tightly regulated at all.

According to thyroid expert Dr. Alan Christianson, a recent study took 114 of the top brand of multivitamins and were evaluated for their iodine content. Some were prescription prenatal supplements, and some were over the counter supplements (7).

All of them had added iodine and had a labeled amount of iodine per serving. Some had iodine from kelp, some had iodine from potassium iodine.

Researchers randomly selected 60 out of the 114 products and purchased them from retail locations as consumers would. They then took these purchased products and did lab analysis to find the actual iodine content.

The results absolutely shocked the scientists when they found:

• Not one single product contained the amount of iodine claimed on the label. Not one.

• The iodine in prescription vitamins was not better controlled than that of non-prescription vitamins.

• Kelp products were worse than those with potassium iodine.

• Some products had three times as much iodine as reported.

• Several products had 400 – 600 mcg of iodine when measured.

Conclusion

Iodine is a complex topic and more is not necessarily better. If you do not know your lab values and believe you have a thyroid disorder, seek medical advice and get testing done to determine what your values are before you begin supplementing with iodine.

Be mindful of whole-food sources of iodine and only purchase your supplements from a reputable supplement dispensary to ensure you’re actually getting what is on the label.

For the complete discussion on this conversation, tune in to the video below and be sure to sign up for my Ultimate Autoimmune Reset™ today!

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